Please Give

Some believe in the pause that refreshes, but Nicole Holofcener's Please Give ensnares a small family in a narrative scaffold that refutes that truism. Here is a family--mother Kate (Catherine Keener), father Alex (Oliver Platt), and daughter Abby (Sarah Steele)--that is caught in New York City in various transitions, each un-fraught, understated, almost uneventful because so "normal." Having just bought the immediately neighboring apartment in the building they live in but cannot conjoin with their own until the 91 year old inhabitant Andra (Ann Guilbert) dies, the parents, owners of an upscale furniture emporium of vintage and semi-modern pieces mostly purchased from the estates of the recently-deceased, face various internal dilemmas. Kate is, perhaps menopausily and certainly tearily addressing guilt over her upper class privilege while the homeless surround her on the street--perhaps $20 to a panhandler will wipe away the tears? Maybe she has been taking too much advantage of the deceased's children when she sees value where they see junk?

Alex sees no problem with making a profit but--can we call it man-o-pause?--falls casually into an affair with a seriously bitter granddaughter of Andra, Mary (Amanda Peet), who comes with her own baggage. Apparently, 91 doesn't necessarily make you a sweet grandma, and the other of the two granddaughters , Rebecca (Rebecca Hall) is the caregiver who tends tirelessly to the loose-tongued oldma. Rounding out this extended family, Abby is a 15 year old convinced that screaming manicly at mom will get her to 20 and independence sooner (though daddy's still a sweetie.)

What writer/director Holofcener seems to want to do in her serious film is to make a serious--note the title--but "small," unsensational statement about everyday people with everyday neuroses. Middle-aged people notice in their everyday mirrors that age has begun its nasty advance. Mary obsessively checks out her former boyfriend's new flame and finds the stalker within. Kate has to learn to "give" Abby $200 jeans though she blithely tosses $5's and $20's to street people. Alex learns that flossing near Kate is more romantic than sweaty sex with Mary. (A romance between Rebecca and a caring but shorter boyfriend (Thomas Ian Nicholas), while charming, seems tangential to the overall plot.

The performances are uniformly spot-on. Ms. Keener, who has worked with Ms. Holofcener before, is incapable of a false moment and inhabits Kate's tearful, self-conscious character with a bravura yet low-key incandescence. Oliver Platt finds the quiet center of man who realizes he's fishing in the wrong pond. Sarah Steele is 15 going on 30. Ms. Hall and Ms. Peet don't make cliches of the good girl and the bad girl. And for those with a long memory Ann Guilbert's Andra will be the capstone that grew from her next-door neighbor's role on the classic "Dick Van Dyke Show."

Small IS good.

                                            Howard Buck